Would you leave your lawnmower out in your driveway overnight? Would you leave your cash drawer and safe open during the day? Then one needs to ask why you would leave your easily concealable and highly trafficable expensive merchandise with nothing but a peg hook to protect it. There is no doubt that you want to have it visible and highly accessible to your customers or they won’t know it is there and it will not get sold. However, if it is made too accessible it will also be readily available to the shoplifter or the organized retail criminal. During my career I have tried to ensure that loss prevention did not become sales prevention by partnering closely with operations and merchandising and recommending solutions such as Alpha Keepers to help protect merchandise without making it unavailable to the consumer.
A recent report by the National Retail Federation reported that shoplifting overtook internal theft as the number one loss source for the first time in 24 years. It was also disclosed that the items responsible for most of those losses are easily concealable, high-dollar merchandise such as razor blades, health and beauty products, and small electronics. Alpha Keepers makes the “Protect” line to help secure this highly sought after merchandise from the random shoplifter and even more importantly from the criminal enterprise who is targeting your merchandise for resale. Protect razor blades will secure and alarm your razor blades, which are easy to remove from your store otherwise, and once removed become easily resold. Protect electronics is a line of Alpha keepers design to do just that: protect electronics. Your small electronics such as high dollar flash drives are easily concealed on the person unless they are in a secure keeper that has its own alarm and must be opened by your cashiers once sold.
I remember opening up a new big box electronics store and shortly after opening begin experiencing a rash of shopliftings of camera SD cards and video games. We had a strong closed-circuit television system of over 400 cameras and were able to do video history reviews to identify what was occurring and when. We finally apprehended him with 20 SD cards in his pocket and four video games secreted in his cargo pants—the haul from one day only! He had hit us on 10 prior occasions and we were fortunate to do a historical investigation and go to his home and serve a search warrant to recover our merchandise. The point of my story is that we did not have Alpha keepers such as protect electronics on our merchandise and our merchandise walked out right in front of our 400 eyes. Needless to say, if you go in that store today, you will find Protect electronics Alpha keepers on all the high-end easily concealable merchandise.
It is up to you now. Are you going to let your merchandise sit out in the open so you make it easy for your customers but also make your store an attractive spot for shoplifters and organized crime or are you going to use protect electronics or protect razor blades from Alpha Keepers to secure your merchandise while making it attractively presented to your customers? If you do the former, your numbers will be included in the new numbers being reported by the National Retail Federation next year. If you do the latter, you will be sending the shoplifter and organized criminals out the door and away from your store. If it was my lawnmower it would be in the garage and if it was my merchandise it would be in Alpha keepers.
For more information on Alpha Keepers contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
